Post-Game Talk: Really good team vs. Really bad team, 7:08 PM

[Turd Ferguson]

Playoffs are so close. I can't contain my excitement for the emotional rollercoaster, especially this year with a team that has all the tools to get it done. Lead us to the promise land Trotz.

 

[Devil Dancer]

Playoffs are so close. I can't contain my excitement for the emotional rollercoaster, especially this year with a team that has all the tools to get it done.

If they actually make some noise I'm going to end up drinking way too much this spring.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

If they actually make some noise I'm going to end up drinking way too much this spring.

Me too, hopefully quite a few hangovers during my placements

 

[txpd]

Playoffs are so close. I can't contain my excitement for the emotional rollercoaster, especially this year with a team that has all the tools to get it done. Lead us to the promise land Trotz.

You missed it. The sky fell on them in St Louis the other night. Its already over.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

You missed it. The sky fell on them in St Louis the other night. Its already over.

Thats unfortunate. I was looking forward to irrational comments from opposing fans about Tom Wilson being scum of the earth and he'll be done in five years.

 

[g00n]

This was posted on the main boards from Steinberg:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...of-you-in-worrying-about-the-caps-motivation/

What Babcock and the other coaches told Trotz was more reassuring than prescriptive. They said he should feel encouraged by the way the Caps had responded to their lulls, how they kept erasing their early mistakes and rallying. They noticed how the Caps so often played their best when games were on the line, even during off nights. And they said Trotz needed to rely on his core group of leaders to take control once April finally arrived, revving the engine back to ludicrous speed.

“You’ve got to trust the group,” Babcock told Trotz. “If you trust the group and you keep the group involved, they’ll move the dial for you.”

“What I’ve found is you can’t get urgency unless you’re urgent, you know what I mean?” Trotz said. “It’s something that you have to be. You have to have your back against the wall. We haven’t had our back against the wall. … We’re not battling to get in the playoffs. We’re not going to game 82, like I’ve gone many a time, to get in the playoffs. That’s the blessing. The curse is that we haven’t played a really meaningful game, if you will — where it could knock us out of first place — we haven’t really played one of those for quite a while. So it’s hard to create urgency.”

The standings have been irrelevant for weeks; “I don’t even know our record, to be honest with you,” Trotz said. Without that external pressure, his coaching staff tried to artificially make things a bit uncomfortable for their players. They fiddled with the lines. They implemented systematic tweaks — “nitpicking,” in Trotz’s word. They briefly adopted a four-line mentality, trying to even out the minutes for all 12 forwards.

So yeah, they know.

 

[maybam]

This was posted on the main boards from Steinberg:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...of-you-in-worrying-about-the-caps-motivation/






So yeah, they know.

I think the best quote was something to the affect of " The season is a marathon. When you are leading by three miles, it's hard to give it your all."

 

[txpd]

you cant have urgency unless you are urgent. we've talked about this. hockey is about the urgency and you cant play a game like its life or death unless you can die if you lose.

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

Urgency and professionalism does not equal LIFE and DEATH.

I'm glad Trotz gets it and is trying lots of motivational tricks to keep them in form or some semblance of it.

 

[g00n]

I like that a lot of posters here sniffed out most of this on their own. Especially the arbitrary line shuffling, which I assume was the RW musical chairs bit.

 

[Langway]

hockey is about the urgency and you cant play a game like its life or death unless you can die if you lose.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the firing squads if they lose. Right.

Utilizing survival mode for a game may squeeze out a little more energy than otherwise but you're tricking yourself in the process. If you're going to trick yourself into believing losing is the same as dying then shouldn't you just trick yourself into preparing better so that when those stakes are present you're better able to execute and maintain composure?

 

[txpd]

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the firing squads if they lose. Right.

Utilizing survival mode for a game may squeeze out a little more energy than otherwise but you're tricking yourself in the process. If you're going to trick yourself into believing losing is the same as dying then shouldn't you just trick yourself into preparing better so that when those stakes are present you're better able to execute and maintain composure?

Trotz said it. To have urgency you must be urgent. The Caps have no urgency.
When I said life and death I meant that in hockey terms but again lets return to that inch. fight and die for that inch. the guy next to you will go that inch with you. the flyers need to fight and die for that inch. the caps just want the inch because it would be nice to have.

 

[Langway]

I would be fine with a coasting type of mentality if at least Ovechkin and Backstrom were somewhere close to being in respectable form or if the PP was consistently dangerous. Those shouldn't be areas that require max effort or total vigilance to at least be decent given their skill level. If we're to assume that Urgency will make the difference I think they're greatly underestimating the power of preparation. Strengths can't be allowed to atrophy and they already have a history of not being mentally primed to execute in do-or-die situations.

They should be relatively fresh and hopefully fully healthy but it seems way too easy to pin everything on consistently wanting it more than anyone else. There will be fifteen other incredibly motivated teams that qualify. From there I think it's more likely to come down to execution than sheer hunger. It's the teams most able to play a compact, supportive, disciplined, resilient and explosive game that will win. There's wanting it and there's having the demeanor, skill set and unpredictability to make it happen.

 

[Stewie G]

The PP severely underperforms in the playoffs, so perhaps this is a form of preparation.